Steve Shelley

Notebook

Early Lee Ranaldo short film with spoken word narration. Utilizes some of the same Sonic Youth tour footage as the ‘TeenAge Riot’ video.

1991: The Year Punk Broke

David Markey's documentary of life on the road with Sonic Youth and Nirvana during their tour of Europe in late 1991. Also featuring live performances by Dinosaur Jr, Babes in Toyland, The Ramones and Gumball.

Sonic Youth: Corporate Ghost

A compilation of 24 music videos by Sonic Youth ranging from 1990 to 2002. Collaborators include Harmony Korine, Spike Jonze, Todd Haynes, Mark Romanek, Richard Kern, and more.

Silver Rockets Kool Things - 20 Years of Sonic Youth

This portrait of the New York band Sonic Youth marking the band’s 20th anniversary covers its history from the beginnings to today. Numerous video clips and films of live gigs as well as interviews with, and reminiscences of, collaborators over the years will be used to document the musical development of one of the most innovative and influential bands of the last two decades. Contemporaries include former mentor Glenn Branca, composer and conductor of guitar symphonies which had a seminal influence on participating musicians such as Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, who went on to become Sonic Youth’s guitarists. The band members‘ numerous creative arts projects and other musical activities – in particular improvised music – will be covered in depth.

Sonic Youth: Rocknacht - Live In Dusseldorf 1996

Live at Rocknacht, Germany 1996. Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from NewYork City, formed in 1981. In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City. Part of the first wave of American noise rock groups, the band carried out their interpretation of the hardcore punk ethos throughout the evolving American underground that focused more on the DIY ethic of the genre rather than its specific sound. As a result, some consider Sonic Youth as pivotal in the rise of the alternative rock and indie rock movements.

Sonic Youth: Live at Eurockéennes

Sonic Youth's 2005 performance at Les Eurockéennes de Belfort festival, one of France's largest rock music festivals.

Sonic Youth: Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui (April 12, 2003)

Filmed April 12, 2003 at a benefit concert held at and for The Anthology Film Archives, the international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of avant-garde and independent cinema. In addition to screening films for the public, AFA houses a film museum, research library and art gallery. The event, which raised money for the Archives and celebrated the life and work of avant-garde film maker Stan Brakhage, featured Sonic Youth providing an improvised instrumental collaboration with silent Brakhage’s films. The band performed with drummer/percussionist Tim Barnes (Essex Green, Jukeboxer, Silver Jews).

Sonic Youth: Blood on the Beach

Sonic Youth's Blood on the Beach is comprised of two shows and interview clips recorded in November 1985 in Brighton, UK.

SY NYC 12/12/01: The Demonlover Sessions

A fly-on-the-wall documentary about the recording of the music score by Sonic Youth.

Goo

In 1991, a long-form music video version of Goo was released on VHS and LaserDisc. A music video for each song from the album was included; the track listing was identical to that of the original album.

365 Day Project

This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.

Be Here to Love Me

Chronicles the fascinating and often turbulent life of Townes Van Zandt.

(This Is Known as) The Blues Scale

While planning the eventual DVD release for "1991: The Year Punk Broke", Dave Markey cut a 40-minute film out of unused footage to create a companion piece to include. The film was also shown to a handful of lucky audiences before the DVD's eventual release in 2011. It's an awesome bonus with tons of great footage that could have easily been in the film. These songs were probably the best to leave out of the full-length film, since 2 were brand new and still quite shaky. The only tour staple not accounted for in either film is "Mary-Christ". Here are the sources I could determine: Inhuman - ?? White Kross - 08/27/91 Bremen Orange Rolls, Angel's Spit - 08/24/91 Koln In Bloom (Nirvana) - 09/01/91 Rotterdam Eric's Trip - 09/01/91 Rotterdam (but spoken intro is from 08/25/91?) Tunic snippet - 08/27/91 Bremen Chapel Hill - 08/27/91 Bremen

Desolation Center

The untold story of a series of Reagan-era guerrilla punk and industrial desert happenings in Southern California that are now recognized as the inspiration for Burning Man, Lollapalooza, and Coachella. Interviews and rare performance footage of Sonic Youth, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Redd Kross, Einstürzende Neubauten, Survival Research Laboratories, Savage Republic, Swans and more.

Sonic Youth: Live at Soundstage

Quintessential alternative rockers, Sonic Youth, celebrate free-form experimentalism while reinforcing their performance-art driven tradition in this Soundstage performance, recorded on May 7, 2003 at WTTW Grainger Studio in Chicago. The band, which settles just outside the realm of definition, delivers a part rock, part free-form noise, part avant-garde punk performance which features a new song "Sympathy for the Strawberry."

Put More Blood Into the Music

PBS produced documentary in two parts: the first is dedicated to saxophonist and composer John Zorn; the second is about Sonic Youth at the height of their powers in 1988.

Sonic Youth: Daydream Nation

A concert film of Sonic Youth performing their Daydream Nation album in full with a bonus encore of Rather Ripped songs at the ABC in Glasgow in 2007.

Sonic Youth: NYC and Beyond

As a fixture of the New York music scene for 30 years, Sonic Youth performed in New York City innumerable times, and served as ersatz cultural ambassadors for the city when traveling. As part of the 2019 Rooftop Films programming, Sonic Youth will present a New York-specific collection of film and videos from their private archives. Much of the material to be presented is completely unseen, threaded together with a few items which are out there in the public knowledge but here presented from the best source available to the band.

Noise

Footage from 2005’s Festival Art Rock in Saint-Brieuc, France, featuring Metric, Sonic Youth, Jeanne Balibar, and other acts.

Hello Hello Hello: Lee Ranaldo, Electric Trim

Filmed during dozens of recording sessions, Hello Hello Hello is a story of the creative process - Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) collaborating with producer Raül Refree, across a year and 3,842 miles with a little help from their friends. Novelist Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude) plays writer/lyricist/muse to Ranaldo's artist/composer wanderings, across soundscapes created alongside friends and musical guest artists including Nels Cline (Wilco), Sharon Van Etten, Alan Licht, Kid Millions (Oneida), and Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth). Theirs is an unusually intimate and personal process in the creation of Ranaldo's album, Electric Trim (Mute, 2017), a bold, new sound and a lush and striking departure from Ranaldo's signature work.

The State's 43rd Annual All-Star Halloween Special

Comedy troupe The State hosts a Halloween special on CBS.

Skeeno H.C. Rules

Sonic Youth play hockey arena w/ Neil Young in Reno, Nevada. Ten years earlier 7 Seconds recorded the earnest hardcore classic "Skins, Brains, & Guts" EP. The town was known as Skeeno. Audio recorded especially for the film by Society's Ills, a band consisting of Mike Watt (bass), Thurston (vocals), Dez Cadena (guitar), & David Markey (drums), who cover said EP.

Sonic Youth: Live at SWU Festival 2011

The final Sonic Youth concert

Sonic Youth: Live in São Paulo 2000

The band performs at the Free Jazz Festival

Sonic Youth: Rockpalast 1998

Rockpalast Festival, Lorelei, Germany

Sonic Youth: Rockpalast 2002

July 11, 2002 E-Werk Cologne, Germany

Sonic Youth: Live in 1991

Sonic Youth in 1991 on Neil Young's Smell the Horse tour, captured by Crazy Horse Guitar/Bass Tech Mondo aka Armando Garcia.

Sonic Youth: Live at Campo Pequeno Lisboa

Sonic Youth's first concert in Portugal. Recorded Live at Campo Pequeno Lisbon, Portugal July 14, 1993

Sonic Youth: Festival Internacional de Benicàssim

Concert given by Sonic Youth on Friday, August 7, 1998, as part of the Benicàssim International Festival. Broadcast on Sputnik Concert (Channel 33) a few weeks later that same year.

Sonic Youth: Maquinaria Festival

The second last show on Sonic Youth's sad final stanza, a festival tour of South America that eventually took them to Chile for the Maquinaria Festival. Putting on a brave face, the band run through a set of hits with some deeper cuts as well, before replacing the planned 'White Cross' encore with a ten-minute 'Teen Age Riot'.

Sonic Youth: 930 Club

Proshot footage from the band's 1988 tour.

Sonic Youth: Tibetan Freedom Concert 1996

June 16, 1996 Golden Gate Park San Francisco

Tibetan Freedom Concert

Documentary surrounding the festival.